No Sale

I’m more of an Adbusters than Adcritic. Sitting down (actually wandering and out of the TV room while doing laundry, poking my head out for commercials) and seeing something that you know is trying to sell you something you can live without is amazing. I didn’t want to watch the Big Game, but nothing else was on and we’ve all been suckered these days into believing the ads are better than the game in some sort of meta-advertising. Don’t unwrap the present for the present, but for the paper and padding surrounding the gift.

Most of what I saw.

Man drinking a beer through his ass. Crude hot dog joke followed.

Man wearing dog on head to get a beer

Fixation on bosomy twins, thanks to beer.

No, wait. Thanks to Beer!

Marijuana leads to pregnancy. Huh. Did I get the birds and the bees all wrong?

Ozzy Osbourne in faux-panic that his doughy, overexposed children were actually the Osmonds. A fit of wonder while watching Ozzy’s horrified face: How do we know this isn’t what he really sees through the prism of his drug-and-booze-addled brain?

And then, Beer!

Oh yes. Beer! segues nicely into upcoming network TV shows about Grade-B celebrities grasping for the air of television exposure, Exploding Spy Hos in lingerie, and Grumpy Cops.

Next, remember the AIDS ads saying that if you sleep with someone, you’ve slept with everyone they slept with in the past 10 years? Well, they’re back with a whole new twist. Now, ghosts haunt people who buy drugs through some Kevin Bacon-style of indirect guilt by association. Um, instead of haunting the guy who may have bought a dime bag of weed about 15 years ago as a stupid college sophomore, why not haunt the asshole who shot you?

Missed “Hulk” commercial, raised eyebrows through “Daredevil,” got dizzy and giggled through the new “Matrix” ads. Keanu still flies? Why? Why not just teleport from point to point if you have so much skill in the virtual world? As for the super-duper swing dance/kung fu battle against the black-suited foes in the schoolyard, silly led to dizzy led to remembering what George Lucas pointed out to us in Episode II: You can overdose on wild camera effects, spinning the dervish so fast you liquefy the script. My friend Cori points out that the first film gave the impression that the machines no longer had all the power. Why make a sequel? Well, think of it this way: Matrix 2! Keanu Jesus is back from the dead and is going to kick Caesar’s ass!

I gave up during halftime, bloated from Al Michaels namedropping Monster.com as if it was a player on the field. Halftime equaled the teams, Cirque du Banal. Sting, Shania Twain and No Doubt, all with their inoffensive Muzak of words, notes and sentiments. Nothing too offensive, nothing quite memorable. My wife and I couldn’t put a finger on it watching an artificially youth-perky Gwen! from No Doubt prance across the stage, rubbing up to Sting!, bored with his half-song appearance and the whole thing looking like a Hollywood pitch of a family values ad where the dad flies around the world from a business appointment so he can be there for the daddy-daughter dance.

And close-up on that family smile, so slightly Lolita on her implanted cheeks. Fade out and cue the next ad.

For Beer!

And this is “football" music? Where’s the rowdiness? Is it relegated to the street vibe of the NBA? Watching the No Doubt drummer, shirtless and painted like some baby-goth intern, I thought about the late Joe Strummer (pre-Jaguar “London Calling”) and how The Clash would have pounded the corporate arena the Big Game was in to the dust. Sting? Bring on the Police and all their dysfunction energy, a team full of egos banding together to play because it’s slightly more rewarding than beating each other up. Back then, Sting played the bass and was moody. Bad for band relations, good for lyrics. Now, he’s tantric and pleased with his VH-1 style. What I wouldn’t have given for Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers to descend in manic waves, plug in his bass and try to drag Sting back to his rock-reggae roots. Have fun, dammit. Go wild. You’re in front of a zillion people.

Turned off the feed from San Diego and watched the second half of BBC’s “Gormenghast” on DVD. My friend Rachel tells me that the author, Mervyn Peake, was so insane near the end of writing the book on which the movie is based that he had to dictate some of it and leave the rest to some intrepid author.

No ads during the film. A good thing.

Today’s Word: Satellite

From One Word

At first, I thought it said Seattle, where I live. I’m a satellite for my wife and my writing idols. I’m trying to break free and find my own voice. One day, my imagination will be carried on a satellite, drifting forever, a last Ark of minds and hopes. Sputnik. There, I said it.